Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 public beta is out

Microsoft has posted the first public beta of Windows Live Essentials Wave 4. …

Microsoft today released the Wave 4 beta of Windows Live Essentials. The Essentials are Microsoft's Windows Live client applications, designed to complement both Windows itself and the company's Windows Live Web services. Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 consists of a long list of software: Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Sync, and the Bing Bar.

As we saw with the Wave 4 Milestone 2 leak, there are big changes for each application, but the biggest ones are for Messenger (previewed in April), Mail, Photo Gallery, and Movie Maker. Live Sync, which is part of the suite as of Wave 4, has also received a major update; Microsoft is combining the old Live Sync product with its Live Mesh product (previously in beta) and the SkyDrive cloud storage service, as part of a broader strategy to integrate and unify its online services. The new Bing Bar is the successor to Windows Live Toolbar.

When Microsoft officially unveiled Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 earlier this month, the Windows Live team said it focused on updating the applications in a way that complements Windows 7. Wave 4 will still work just fine on Windows Vista, but not on Windows XP.

Microsoft is also positioning the suite as competition for Apple's iLife suite, which is a more aggressive posture than before.

31 Reader Comments

Does Movie Maker suck less? It was passable on Vista for basic editing, not available in 7 except via Live which was useless. I was forced to download the Vista one and install it. Should I continue to do so?

The Project tab is odd; it has a few throw-away features (though admittedly the "Fit to music" button appears useful), but it's certainly not home to a timeline and it's really not clear why the tab is there in the first place.

The Edit video tab still features that incredibly annoying duration box, forcing you to guess (and re-guess) at the length of a photo rather than sliding it precisely - like in a timeline - to where you want it to go.

So, WLMM is still a high-class slideshow maker to me. I guess the WLMM development team is truly serious about the Movie Maker enthusiast community moving on to commercial software.

If only the improvements in this new version had been added to WMM6! In any case, I'll continue to use WMM6 (Vista) on Windows 7.

Understanding your play on words. However it is also the case that, for anti-trust reasons, the maker of the dominant operating system is not allowed to include some things that some would consider "essential".

The result is that many simple things, like an IM client, default browser, movie editor, picture editor, security software, and pdf creation functionality have to be installed after the fact. Essential might mean those things the Microsoft would have included if it were allowed to do so and which another iOperating system can included and integrate more fully into their competing systems.

I see it as a necessary evil but, unfortunately, also means some consumers are paying for software as they are unaware that some basic things are freely available.

Microsoft is combining the old Live Sync product with its Live Mesh product (previously in beta) and the SkyDrive cloud storage service, as part of a broader strategy to integrate and unify its online services.

The Project tab is odd; it has a few throw-away features (though admittedly the "Fit to music" button appears useful), but it's certainly not home to a timeline and it's really not clear why the tab is there in the first place.

The Edit video tab still features that incredibly annoying duration box, forcing you to guess (and re-guess) at the length of a photo rather than sliding it precisely - like in a timeline - to where you want it to go.

So, WLMM is still a high-class slideshow maker to me. I guess the WLMM development team is truly serious about the Movie Maker enthusiast community moving on to commercial software.

If only the improvements in this new version had been added to WMM6! In any case, I'll continue to use WMM6 (Vista) on Windows 7.

I totally agree, the VISTA version was much better and easier to use. I loved that timeline. Why in the world they don't have BASIC and ADVANCED menus, this beta version is way too oversimplified.

Microsoft is combining the old Live Sync product with its Live Mesh product (previously in beta) and the SkyDrive cloud storage service, as part of a broader strategy to integrate and unify its online services.

Can anybody explain the wave thing to me. Is it versions? something else?

also, if it is essential, why is it optional, and separate.

All Wave 4 means is that its the 4th major release of the Live Essentials suite. A lot of people keep making fun of Microsoft for this name but its just an internal code word. If you look at their public website, I'm pretty sure you will not see any mention of "Wave 4" and instead will just see these products simply refered to as "Live Essentials." It honestly isn't that confusing folks.

The only app I used quite often was Photo Viewer, new version is actually really nice and really welcome improvement. I like it a lot!

That was the only thing that seemed good to me as well. You could even add photosynth as one of the tools. However there was a fly in the ointment. It automatically saves edits to your pictures without asking when you quit . It says you can revert at anytime, but that would only be with this program installed. That is very bad behavior. It also crashed when I accidentally clicked on the "blog crap" button and I tried to back out of it.

Messenger also goes to the tray when you quit, and there is no way to get rid of it, outside of the task manager. (by the way, it uses up 32 megs of ram doing nothing!)

I've been using Mesh since it was originally launched and I think it's a brilliant service. One the one hand, it integrates beautifully with Windows Explorer to handle the syncing (just right click on a folder, add folder to mesh, folder turns blue and it's now synced.) It also adds a sidebar to synced folders with a bevy of info about its synced status: what recent changes have taken place in this folder? who shares the folder? what devices does the folder sync with?

On the other hand, there's the fantastic live desktop: all synced folders, in the cloud, simulating a Windows desktop. You can drag and drop files onto the live desktop to add files from non-synced devices. I could create a folder in the Live Desktop, drag some files into it, and when I get back home the folder is already synced on my desktop with all the files in it. Beautiful.

Live Sync, on the other hand, is a gigantic step backwards. Folders to be synced must be selected from a menu withing the Live Sync UI. There's no way of knowing which folders are synced and which aren't just by looking at the folders. No way of knowing of recent changes to the folder.

Instead of the brilliant Live Desktop, we get devices.live.com, which is basically SkyDrive with synced folders. It...works, but navigation leaves a lot to be desired. Again, no way of knowing which new files have been added / deleted. No way (AFAIK) of syncing files from the cloud to the devices. And it pretty much looks like MySpace to boot.

Unfortunately, MS will eventually kill off Mesh and we'll be stuck with this. I'll personally continue using Mesh until they pry it off my cold, dead hands.

I've been using Mesh since it was originally launched and I think it's a brilliant service...[Plus a bunch of other good, totally reasonable points.]

I've been using Mesh for a long time too. The interface is a step backwards in some ways, but it also has some nice improvements. The IE and Office syncing are pretty cool. If they can add Ribbon customizations to the syncing, that would be awesome. I also like the fact that I can see all the folders I'm syncing without going to the Mesh site.

The 2 GB limit, on the other hand, is a massive buzz kill. Either give me 25 GB of space, or don't. I'd pay for the storage space/sync integration, but they need to figure out what they're going to do and move forward (as opposed to the status of Mesh over the last year or so).

EDIT: Hmm...you know what, I take it back. You're right, JC. Their strategy is still a confusing fucking debacle, and Live Sync isn't enough to overcome the arcane logic of MS's cloud storage. You get 25 GB, but only 2 GB can be for clould syncing, because they found that was good enough for most users. I'm not most users--I have 2 GB in one folder. You can sync folders peer-to-peer (without cloud storage), but they have to be under 40 GB total. Why? I have 40 GB in my music folder.

I get it. It's a cost thing. Where's the pay option?

For me, the only way they can save this if they replace the cloud storage component with Vail. If I can use my own Home server for the 'cloud storage' aspect, so that I can access my data anywhere, and not have to worry about which data I really want to be available anywhere and which data can be limited. A lot of the components are there. You can already use a WHS system to access PCs remotely and access data remotely. If it was just integrated a little better, and brought in the syncing component so my server would make sure I always had the updated version of a file, I'd be sound as a pound.

I just tried to Sync my pictures file but it says its over the 2gb limit I thought skydrive had a 25gb limit? and when I log in the pictures aren't on my sky drive. Its a pain in the are to do it manually

I just tried to Sync my pictures file but it says its over the 2gb limit I thought skydrive had a 25gb limit? and when I log in the pictures aren't on my sky drive. Its a pain in the are to do it manually

Sync is 2gb as it will sync from any machine to the cloud. Skydrive is just storage, no auto sync and hence 25gb. It would be nice if I could pay more $$ to have higher sync and skydrive caps.

Mail is really nice, and Sync is a fair merger of Mesh and Skydrive. not what I wanted, but good enough for free. I still prefer Picasa to WL Photo Gallery mainly because Picasa's sync to web feature is easier to manage. If Photo Gallery had some way of showing which photos were "in the cloud" I'd switch to it full time.

Well, after some testing, I have to say something about the new Sync: they're killing Mesh for THIS pile of trash? Really? Let's break this utter failure down by what features Sync failed to steal from Mesh in the year since they stopped doing anything new with Mesh.

Online storage: Mesh had 5GB, Sync has 2GB. Why? Because they ran some metrics and saw most people didn't use more than 2GB, so they wanted to cut costs. Why not hook this up to the REAL SkyDrive and all it's 25GB of space instead of making it yet another also-ran?

Windows Explorer integration: Mesh will integrate into explorer, letting you just right click to add a folder sync, change the syncing settings, or just unsync it completely. It also would tag the folder with a blue icon and pop out a sidebar for synced folders telling you what files have been changed and when, and if there's any sync conflicts (the conflict resolution window still needed a lot of work, though). Mesh also created a virtual directory in your user folder that had links to every Mesh folder, a rather handy thing if you had them spread out all over. What does Sync have? Nothing.

Service interaction: Besides the stuff in Explorer, Mesh's notification area icon would pop up a small, multi-tabbed interface. Tab 1 would have an abbreviated list of recent changes to files. Tab 2 was a list of all your devices, and if any of them were syncing, it would show which way, how much data in total, and how much it had already synced; you could also connect to the machines via the tunneled Remote Desktop . And tab 3 showed all the synced folders, giving you and even faster way to jump right over to them in Explorer. So, what does Sync have? A single windowed item that has one tab for all the synced folders, with zero indication of what's changed, how big they are, etc. And the second tab lets you Remote Desktop to the other synced machines.

File sync limitations: Mesh really didn't have any hard rules about what you could or could not sync. The only practical limitation I found was that it wouldn't notice changes inside of a hard or soft linked directory. But it would rescan and sync the contents all the same if you cycled Mesh off then back on. On the other hand, Sync will just outright not sync any hard or soft link, period. Another issue is that it won't sync inf and xml files at all (and doesn't tell you this); this is by design, they say, to protect users. But for people like me who used Mesh (or other products) to sync program settings, this is a complete disaster. And while hard/soft links aren't normal people territory, they let me just have a single synced share for a whole mess of drag-and-drop install programs. Sync kills both of those practices.

So, other than killing most of what I used Mesh for, Sync isn't too terrible. But, it wasn't too bad before. Heck, I used to use it before I found Mesh, back before it had online storage or Remote Desktopping. They claim it's faster at syncing, and it might be, but since it doesn't really tell you what it's syncing, there's no real way to know. They also make claims that Remote Desktop works better; but since I couldn't get my laptop to connect over it, at all, I couldn't really test that claim. The Live Devices page is an OK replacement for the Live Desktop, although the Live Desktop felt more natural and supported drag-and-drop (if only in IE with an ActiveX plugin).

Overall, Microsoft has killed a service I love to replace it with a pale shadow. I guess it's time to look into GBridge.

EDIT: Hmm...you know what, I take it back. You're right, JC. Their strategy is still a confusing fucking debacle, and Live Sync isn't enough to overcome the arcane logic of MS's cloud storage. You get 25 GB, but only 2 GB can be for clould syncing, because they found that was good enough for most users. I'm not most users--I have 2 GB in one folder. You can sync folders peer-to-peer (without cloud storage), but they have to be under 40 GB total. Why? I have 40 GB in my music folder.

Q: How is the Sync beta different from the last version of Sync (previously known as FolderShare)?

A: Here are just some of the differences:•Folders can be synced on online storage for access even when computers are offline•Remote connection functionality replaces web-based browsing of folders on connected PCs •Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office program settings can be synced across PCs•More files (100k) are supported per Sync folder and more Sync folders are supported (200)•Even larger files (up to 50 GB) can be synced•The location of synced folders is automatically selected so folders can be synced across multiple PCs in one step•Support for only Windows 7, Windows Vista with SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard and later

There's absolutely no mention of any total limits on there - merely assertions that you can do whatever you like, providing no file is larger than 50GB and there's no more than 100,000 files in a folder (which is just how Sync/Foldershare works right now, but with 2GB (or 4GB ? I can't remember) and 20,000 file limits).

Well, Messenger logs me in just fine, but my contacts can only see me as Offline. I don't get any messages they send, but they get the ones I send to them.

Sure it's a beta, but what a huge pile.

Back to the ugly but extremely functional Digsby, I guess.

Apparently the new Messenger changes the behaviour of the old Allow/Block lists. If you were using one there's a good chance that you're set to block all your contacts, or something, and will need to unblock them.